[Note: It’s official - the recent notion that greater dietary and/or supplemental calcium intake might be linked to increased risk of arterial calcification & heart disease has no basis in fact. Careful measurements of more than 1,300 men and women tracked in the longest running medical study in history – Harvard’s Framingham Heart Study – turned up exactly no connection.]

Background: Adequate calcium intake is known to protect the skeleton. However, studies that have reported adverse effects of calcium supplementation on vascular events have raised widespread concern.

Objective: We assessed the association between calcium intake (from diet and supplements) and coronary artery calcification, which is a measure of atherosclerosis that predicts risk of ischemic heart disease independent of other risk factors.

Conclusion: Our study does not support the hypothesis that high calcium intake increases coronary artery calcification, which is an important measure of atherosclerosis burden. The evidence is not sufficient to modify current recommendations for calcium intake to protect skeletal health with respect to vascular calcification risk.